New Job

April 1 2012 will begin a new chapter for me. Most of my friends know that I’ve worked in a grant funded position for the University of Georgia as a field monitor for the federal government’s weatherization program since August 2010. When I took this position I knew that it would have a definite ending date, but honestly I just wanted relief from the stress of my current line of work. I went in to this job with my own personal pre-dispositions of government spending, but was very interested in the training for a new way of thinking about energy and conservation. Over the last two years my opinions of both have changed.

As a field monitor located in central Georgia, I was responsible inspecting the work done in nineteen counties. This seemed like a large area to cover at first, but it left the 140 remaining counties to be inspected by my co-workers. This group of men and women were as smart and hard working as any I’ve met, and genuinely cared how our tax dollars were being spent. Sadly at the end of the month most of them will be either un-employed or working somewhere else. Hopefully some will remain in this field and utilize the training they’ve received, but given the political cloud that shrouds energy usage and conservation, many will not.

I welcome any conversations reguarding the true face of the recipients of this program, and anyone that wants to know how to stop needlessly “donating” their hard-earned income to the utility companies is more than welcome to contact me. I have another blog full of low tech homeowner friendly energy saving tips, and links to other very technical blogs. (southernexposurega.blogspot.com)I can give you hard numbers from my personal home…weatherization works! But I mainly wanted to post this for the friends that knew I would be un-employed at the end of March and wondered which direction I would take. Luckily I am going to remain with The University of Georgia as the Coordinator of the program for the entire state!